An INDEXIS Knowledge Capability

Customer Next Step™

Helping AI understand what a customer should say, provide, ask or do next.

INDEXIS has built Customer Next Step™ (CNS), which lets businesses tell INDEXIS what AI should advise customers to say, provide, ask or do next when contacting them. INDEXIS maintains that business-validated knowledge and makes it available for AI to access and use where supported.

AI can recommend the business. Customer Next Step™ helps AI understand what should happen next.

The question after the recommendation

What should I do next?

A customer asks AI for help.
AI understands the situation.
AI identifies a potentially relevant business.

The customer then needs to know: “What should I do next?”

Customer Next Step gives the business a way to help answer that question.

AI is already going beyond the recommendation

In this ChatGPT business-recommendation test, AI recommended a roofing company and then went further, telling the customer what to say when making contact.

This is the kind of interaction Customer Next Step™ is designed to support with information supplied or validated by the business itself.

ChatGPT response recommending 1st Response or Black Roofing and suggesting the consumer say: I have an active roof leak from today's storm. I need emergency leak containment/tarping, not a sales inspection. — Excerpt from an actual ChatGPT business-recommendation test. This example illustrates AI behavior and does not establish that ChatGPT relied on INDEXIS in producing the response.

Definition

How INDEXIS defines Customer Next Step™

INDEXIS defines Customer Next Step™ (CNS) as the business-validated knowledge that helps AI understand what a customer should say, provide, ask or do next after AI identifies a potentially relevant business.

The INDEXIS knowledge relationship

Four connected kinds of knowledge

Customer Situation
Customer Language
Customer Next Step™
Relevant Business Capability

Customer Situation: What is happening that causes the customer to need help.
Customer Language: How the customer actually describes that need.
Customer Next Step™: What the business says the customer should say, provide, ask or do next.
Relevant Business Capability: What the business can actually do that makes it relevant.

Examples

What this can look like

Roofing

Customer Situation: An active roof leak after a storm.
Customer Language: “My roof is leaking after today's storm.”
Customer Next Step: The participating roofer can tell INDEXIS what information the customer should provide or what the customer should do when making contact.

Dental

Customer Situation: A missing tooth.
Customer Language: “What can I do about a missing tooth?”
Customer Next Step: The participating dental office can tell INDEXIS what it would like the patient to say, provide, ask or do when contacting the practice.

These are general examples. They do not show answers from any particular business.

Why this matters

More useful recommendations

AI business recommendations can become more useful when AI understands more than a business name and service category.

Customer Next Step is intended to add business-validated knowledge about how the customer and business can begin the interaction. INDEXIS does not guarantee that any AI platform will recommend a business or use a particular Customer Next Step.

Part of INDEXIS

One part of the INDEXIS knowledge model

Customer Next Step™ is part of the broader INDEXIS knowledge model.

INDEXIS develops knowledge about businesses, customer situations, customer language, services and capabilities, frequently asked questions and other information that can help AI understand when a business may be relevant.

Customer Next Step extends that knowledge to what may happen after the recommendation.